Freezing and Thawing
The door locks were frozen on the driver’s side of my grey BMW. The 2002 model my parents had bought for me, years earlier. I was living in Greeley, Colorado with the husband I would later wonder why I had married even when voices inside expressed my mixed feelings from the moment he proposed. Seeking security and some separation from my family, I agreed to the marriage and the move to this cold piece of landscape in the flatlands of Colorado.
I had to drive each morning to my job as Public Relations Director at the small, community college which was more about auto body and nursing prerequisites than what I thought was the more valuable liberal arts curriculum I had pursued. Deicer, some chemical in a spray bottle, was useful and the locks thawed so I could begin the drive. Across the plains, with the mountains far ahead, I composed the kinds of conversations I would have liked to have with my husband about how I didn’t feel connected or valued.
They never happened, these conversations, frozen in wait for deliverance a few years later. Frozen locks and frozen ideas were a theme, for some years. Before the wedding and all that followed, I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During those academic winters I hardly ever drove the grey 2002. How could I move it from the small parking lot adjacent to my apartment when drifts of snow had planted themselves in front and around and in back? I walked mostly. Through the law school quad, up to the pristine Rackham library or to the labyrinth of classrooms in the Journalism department.
I was seeking a life apart, hoping to find a path that was somehow my own. But the influence of my well-meaning parents, particularly my mother, challenged my ability to wonder, “what if.” So the path from graduate school to marriage was almost seamless. Until a weekend, a cold, snowy weekend when my husband had left town to mull over my claims of incompatibility. My therapist at the time challenged me to spend the weekend doing what I wanted, without concern for what would be useful, or creative or helpful. I was pretty good at freezing my thoughts to fit neatly into the ice cube trays of other people’s expectations.
On this particular weekend I spent most of Sunday trying out various options. I put on my cross-country skis to move silently to the neighborhood park. It was beautiful, the snow-covered branches and the silence. Unfulfilled, I returned home to thaw and try again. I must have cooked something or sorted something or cleaned something in the ensuing hours, but not much happiness or satisfaction to report. Just before dinner I decided to hand wash the collection of underwear and pantyhose - yes, in those days – and whatever odd pieces had gathered in the red, drawstring bag I reserved for what wasn’t appropriate for the washing machine. Woolite, cool water, a bathroom sink. The rhythm of dipping and soaking and wringing. Of hanging. The ice cubes began to melt as my inaccessible thoughts and feelings began to thaw.